English documents
INTERNATIONAL LABOR DAY MESSAGE
May 1, 2003
ONE HUNDRED YEARS ago, on May 1, 1903, a hundred thousand Filipino workers marched towards the U.S. colonial seat of power at Malacañang Palace in Manila. Their voices echoed in the streets: Death to imperialism!
At the turn of the last century, U.S. imperialism has killed more than a million Filipinos, one sixth of the entire population of the Philippines, in its bloody colonial occupation of our country. A hundred years hence, imperialist exploitation and war continue to squeeze the blood, toil and tears of our workers and people. We stand with the rest of the workers and oppressed peoples in the world today, defiantly proclaiming: Death to imperialism! No to unjust wars! Freedom from exploitation! Fight against repression and all forms of oppression!
We stand united with the Arab world and all the freedom-loving peoples against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq! We stand united with the longshore workers in California being brutally shot in the back by the police! We stand united with the trade unionists of Colombia living under constant fear of assassination by the Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC)! We stand united with the workers of India and the other countries against the rising tide of fascism!
As we speak today, the chief U.S. puppet in the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has allowed the entry of more than a thousand U.S. troops in our country under the guise of another military exercise but is actually part of a continuing chain of flagrant military intervention in this part of oil rich, resource laden and strategic Southeast Asia.
The Philippine puppet regime who supported the so-called “coalition of the willing’ of the U.S. in Iraq has never respected the people, the U.N., nor international law. The U.S. continues to impose its neocolonial rule on our country. It is now touting the Philippines as a “second front” of the U.S. war offensive after Afghanistan in Central Asia and Iraq in the Middle East.
The U.S.- Macapagal-Arroyo regime unleashed a “total war” against Muslim Mindanao and the countrysides against the revolutionary forces of the Communist Party o the Philippines, New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). It is seeking the passage of an “Anti-Terror Act” patterned after the “US Patriot Act” to treat strikes and other democratic protest actions as “terrorist activities” and thus crackdown on the legal mass movement. Big capitalists are clamoring for a “strike ban” while tripling the exploitation rate on our workers under the scourge of imperialist “globalization”, implemented massive wage and job cuts, eroded agriculture and industry, generated double digit unemployment rates and further aggravated the misery of our impoverished people.
Exploitation and repression is intensified. But our workers, together with the rest of the laboring masses and the people are fighting back. Under the leadership of the working class, we remain steadfast in fighting for genuine national liberation and democracy in the undiminished hope that socialism is achieved and fulfilled.
The world is resurgent with mass struggles and revolution against imperialist war and exploitation. United, we shall never be defeated!
Long live international workers’ solidarity!